Palm Oil

Introduction and Uses
Palm oil is a cheap alternative to vegetable oil produced in tropical countries which has a myriad of uses from food to fuel. It is often used in the mass manufacture of margarine, biscuits, pasta, cosmetic products and biofuel. It is rarely or never listed as an ingredient, instead it may be listed as 'Vegetable Oils'. Consequently the provenance of palm oil in products we buy (whether it is from a sustainable source or otherwise) can only be discovered by investigating agencies such as Greenpeace. According to The Independent newspaper half of all packaged food products sold by our supermarkets are made with tropical palm oil.

Worse than fossil fuel
Clearing land for palm oil plantations is now the biggest source of rainforest destruction. In Sumatra and Borneo, some 4 million hectares of forest has been converted to palm farms. Now a further 6 million hectares is scheduled for clearance in Malaysia, and 16.5m in Indonesia. This has led environmental campaigner George Monbiot to brand palm oil "worse than fossil fuel". Palm oil can only grow in tropical countries, which are usually poor , thus it provides a useful source of income but at a cost of changing the land use. Normally this means destroying dense tropical rainforest, which sustains a large number of species and replacing it with the monoculture of the oil palm. The expansion of palm oil products and plantations therefore has a strong negative impact on the ecosystem both locally and globally. In Indonesia and Malaysia thirty square miles are felled daily in order to exploit palm oil. Naturally this rainforest can never be recovered. Researchers from the Dutch pressure group Wetlands International found that as much as half the space created for new palm oil plantations was cleared by draining and burning peat-land, sending huge amounts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The exploitation of palm oil, therefore, contributes to climate change in more ways than one.

Some Key Facts

 * An estimated 5,000 orangutans are killed each year in Malaysia and Indonesia through palm oil exploitation 
 * In Indonesia and Malaysia thirty square miles are felled daily in order to exploit palm oil. 
 * WWF estimates that 80 per cent of orangutan habitat has been lost in the past 20 years .
 * Indonesia aims to almost double the 6.5m hectares under oil palm plantation in the next five to eight years - tripling it by 2020 
 * By 2022 98% of the rainforests of Indonesia and Malaysia will be gone. 
 * Fires in Indonesia to clear the land generate an estimated 1,400m tonnes of carbon dioxide each year 
 * In Indonesia over 100 million people depend upon access to rainforest resources for their survival. 

Related SourceWatch articles

 * Round Table on Sustainable Palm Oil
 * Sinar Mas

External resources
http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/palm-oil http://www.greenpeace.org.uk/forests/faq-palm-oil-forests-and-climate-change  What’s wrong with palm oil? http://nope.org.uk/whats-wrong-with-palm-oil/ We must reap the benefits of palm oil, but manage the environmental costs http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/cif-green/2010/jul/13/spelman-palm-oil-sustainable RAN's list of palm oil products http://ran.org/fileadmin/materials/rainforest_ag/tpwpo/list_of_palm_products_20090917.pdf Friends of the Earth: The use of palm oil for biofuel and as biomass for energy http://www.foe.co.uk/resource/briefings/palm_oil_biofuel_position.pdf The Oil Palm, website of the Malaysian Palm Oil Council

External articles

 * Malaysian palm oil destroying forests, report warns http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/2011/feb/02/malaysian-palm-oil-forests
 * The palm oil PR offensive is gathering pace – but not weight http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/blog/2011/feb/23/palm-oil-adam-smith-institute

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